Anarchy in the US
by DieInVinter
Summary: Everything is Illuminated Exactly what the title says.
1. Nomads with the Truth

An AU based around the often-pondered idea of "Alex coming to America."

Chapter One: Nomads with the Truth  
Oozed quite unpleasantly out of the brainmeats of Kuddelfiske

_ December 15 1999_

_Dear Jonathan,  
It is with great anticipation that I sit in this most uncomfortable chair, awaiting America. I know it may make you a perplexed person to know that I am writing to you only a few hours preceding our reunitement, but it is the only action with which I may terminate any amount of what Father-who-is-no-longer-Father has dubbed "fidgeting." I am much too liable to do this because I am often made an excessively boring person by these unexciting circumstances. I will inform you of all the things that I have performed since I set forth to America in this most direly uncomfortable arrangement. The first thing was to look at the magazines inside the pocket of the chair which I am facing, which very hastily made me boring, even considering that I am now an expert in airplane evacuation, including parachute activation, in case there should be a disaster. Perusing such instructions appealed to me as being similar to what you would study to occupy yourself. I do not intend to imply that you are an overly anxious person, Jonathan, but that you are very inclined to be as secure as it is possible for you to be, which, regrettably, was not very in Ukraine. The second thing was to hit on the flight attendant. I will not go into very great detail, as it did not end well. The third thing was to read "War and Peace" by Tolstoy (thank you for informing me that they are indeed one book, not two as I had previously considered), which grew tiring after three hours. (Actually, Jonathan, it grew tiring after three minutes, but I felt as though I had an obligation toward self-betterment as prescribed by literature. Also, there was truly nothing else to do.) At this point, I began to manufacture zzzs with my face in my own lap, which is not such an enjoyable thing. But it is all endurable when I consider your country! My solitary regret is that Little Igor could not accompany me, but there are reasons. I will procure for him many photographs and many letters. I had so wanted him to see this place, Jonathan, but it is not possible. So many things are not possible._

I set down my pen. It was becoming rigid to write, and I had not intended for my letter to become melancholy. We are in no shortage of that, although we are attempting to make it not so. Mother was already becoming a happier person in the absence of Father. Although he had never violenced her, she was still made distressed by his presence, and always attempting to procure things of which he will approve, which was not very cinchy. Sometimes Father's disapproval stung and it pained me more than his punches. He had the most malevolent eyes in his anger. Although the situation of his absence was never entirely elucidated to Little Igor, he understood (you will note that I did not write "understanded"), and lives in accordance less fearfully. That is all I truly want, is for Mother and Little Igor to not live in fear. Fear is the opposite of happiness. I have reprimanded Jonathan several times upon this fact.

The pilot informs us that we will be landing shortly. I lean and look out the diminutive window and smile, because New York City is in view, and it is so beautiful. The uncountable lights issuing forth from below recall one of Jonathan's stories of Trachimbrod, and the light, except that I am not in space, merely an airplane, and it should be much brighter if it were. Regardless, it makes me smile at Jonathan Safran Foer's genius, and his strange ideas. Because he is not so often speaking, I contemplate that it gives him the space necessary for thinking. Many people assume that I am empty-headed because I am nearly always speaking, but this is far from the truth. I am a very thoughtful person, more thoughtful than many, but I do not mean to imply that I could have ever cognated the light.

My stomach lurches forward for the descent, but I can easily forget. As the wheels and the plane bump up and down before finally resting on the ground, I feel myself go almost numb with amazement -- this is America! I inform the man next to me enthusiastically of this, but he becomes very irritated and says, "I know," before standing to remove his luggage from the space above. I stand to retrieve mine. It is a very aged suitcase, as Grandfather possessed it, and it is plastered with many Soviet stickers. I smile embarrassedly at the businessman with his sleek black suitcase, which is not covered in Soviet stickers, and he ignores me, shuffling forward in the very slow line to exit the airplane. I join this shuffle, letting five people follow the severe man before I do, so as not to let him ruin my first impression. Not that anything really could, of course. I have been imagining America for too long.

"Good afternoon, thank you for flying with us!" the flight attendant in the short skirt says to the hostile American. She says this to the five people, but then as I pass, she looks at me with pursed lips and disgust. I try to make amends by informing her that I am not American, but she only replies, "I can tell." But I keep walking.

It is not surprising to me that this airport is much more spacious and much more crowded than the one in Kiev, but the sheer amount of people was unforeseen! A few of them seemed strangely familiar, but I brush the notion aside. Why be nostalgic over the thing of the past, which is so much less premium than the thing of the present? I am not intending to imply that I am not nationalistic of Ukraine, but I cannot prevent comparing it, just as one cannot help but compare a melancholy landfill to a modern incinerator. I dig incinerators, even if they are not so premium with the environment. I know that Jonathan would disapprove (he does not even eat the chickens!), just as he would disapprove of many things which I dig, like Ferraris, leather shorts, and girls who are informal with their boxes.

As I recall The Collector, I realize very suddenly that I should be searching for him. A veritable sea of people flows before and all around me, and I weave through it, looking for a person who lacks all color. Jonathan Safran Foer appears to me as though he emerged from one of the aged movies Grandfather used to watch on television late at night, when he thought I was not observing him. He is also acting like this, with very good manners and quiet, similar to the dramatic movies, but not like in the jovial musicals which Grandfather occasionally smiled and scoffed at, which had the top hats and the man with the mustache of Hitler. I always considered it a very odd display of facial hair, but as I scratching at the space between my lip and my nose, I thought that I should be green with envy for anyone capable of procuring even a miniature mustache. It is regrettable that I have never had to shave in my life, and I am of a valiant 24 years! I often imitate the act of shaving when Little Igor is proximal so that he will consider his brother a great deal more masculine. Not than I am not, of course. I simply cannot procure much more than miniscule hairs on my face, which are bothersome and spleen me. I try to imagine the hero with a beard and mustache, like the Rabbis and Hasidic Jews (although Jonathan is a jew with a miniature j) are in the practice of having, and I burst out with laughter.

I feel a light tapping on my shoulder and I turn around, quizzical. It is indeed the clean-faced hero! I eye his attire and cognate that looking for a black-and-white person had been a futile effort, because he is not wearing his usual suit, but instead the shirt I had mailed him that said "Heritage Touring" on it in English and in Russian, and also, very strangely, blue jeans!

"I bothered to learn how to spell your name right," he says to me, with the faintest smirk, holding out a rectangular sign for me to observe. On it is written my name in Russian!

"So you are speaking Russian now?" I inquire.

"Ah, I take lessons every now and then," he says, positioning his hand behind his head. "I don't really know that much yet, except the Cyrillic alphabet, and of course, you know, _Jhid_."

"You are no longer a putz!" I exclaim, very proud.

He laughed at my funny. "No, I guess not." There was a brief passage of silence between us.

"Would it be permissible to hug you, Jonfen?"

"Um, sure, go right ahead." He shrugs, and I hug him very tightly, in the process levitating him off the ground. I had forgotten that he is severely short, and that I am unequivocally tall!

"Wow," he utters, laughing a little as I release him, "I haven't been hugged that violently in ages."

"Who was it?"

He looks over to me as we walk through the airport. "My Grandmother."

"Sabine …"

"She used to lift me off the ground, too," he said, smiling at the memory. I smile at it, too. "We should go get the rest of your bags from the  
carousel thing." I bit my lip regretfully.

"Actually, Jonfen, this suitcase is all I am in possession of." His eyes bug out, magnified by his glasses.

"What, are you serious? Just one piece of luggage?"

"This is the truth."

"People usually bring a bit more than that when they go to a different continent, you know," he says, but it is informative, not disapproving.

"I am not in possession of an excessive amount of things," I utter, shrugging, "so I brought what I thought I would need."

"I never really thought of you as being particularly frugal," he says, eyeing my solitary Soviet-crap suitcase and then my bling, which I had to remove to pass through the x-ray machine. I smile, and say nothing. I had discovered the money, which Grandfather had wanted among his possessions, and although I felt as though I should perform something more honorable than this, I pocketed it to finance my long-planned trip. It was all currency that I had not disseminated at famous nightclubs, as I had often boasted of doing. When I look back upon it, I often wonder why I was such a nomad with the truth in ways that were not similar at all to Jonathan's. Everything I spoke not-truths about was merely to elevate how other people observed me, and every not-truth he wrote was to elevate how he observed other people. There are just as many different varieties of selfishness as there are varieties of sadness, but I am sure that ours are forgivable. "I'm sorry, I make too many assumptions …"

"It is only because I make too many not-truths."

"I like your not-truths," he says, looking up at the flags hanging from the ceiling. "They make sense."


	2. Phobia

In this division: Jonfen talks. A lot.

Chapter Two: Phobia  
Scribbled down by Kuddelfiske

It was commencing darkness as we merged onto the superway.

"Actually, we call it a highway here," informed Jonathan, and the term manufactured very little sense to me; but it is unwise to spleen a person or cause them to make shit of a brick if he is the driver of the car you are in, and especially unwise if the person is already making shit of a brick without your inquiry. He is very slightly pale. Well, more than is usual, and he is clenching his teeth, then proceeding to unclench them when he sense that I am observing him.

"You are okay?" I hope that it is a common decency to inquire, and believe it was, because he appeared slightly calmer when I did.

"Yeah, I'm okay. Just a little … nervous to be driving, that's all."

"You do possess a license, yes?"

"Of course I do! I just don't like to drive … ever. If I can help it."

"I do not possess a license and I am often driving," I say, shrugging. "It is not so difficult."

"That's the thing, it really isn't. But I've seen photos of accidents …"

"It is so unlikely!"

"Nobody said phobias were rational."

"What does it mean, phobias?"

"You know, fears. Things that distress you."

"Oh, I am remembering now."

He drove in silence for a duration, and the only words I heard Jonathan say were expletives under his breath when we crossed a large bridge. It made me a funny person to hear him, but I tried not to smile.

"What, are you distressed by bridges as well?" I meant to sound compassionate, but it was becoming very difficult to keep my growing irritation secretive.

"A little," he says, his line of vision upwards so he would not observe the tall fences on the sides, or the water below us.

"Do you wish for me to drive?" Not very secretive at all.

"Fuck, no," he exclaims, slamming down on the brake. "You don't even have a license in the Ukraine, how can you expect to be allowed to drive here?"

"Do not be always dubbing it "the Ukraine." It is merely "Ukraine," understand?"

"I always heard it called "the."

"Most people are wrong, as are you."

"Does it even matter?"

"Yes!" I shout. Jonathan glares at me. "No, it does not."

He looks less malevolent then and drew one hand up to his forehead to wipe away some imaginary perspiration as he surveys the outside of his window. "I am apologetic for getting on nerves with you, Jonfen. It is just very alarming to be again in a car when I am with you finally and we could be doing better things than this."

"What better things?"

"I do not know, it is your country, not mine." I think I hear the hero utter something with the word "cryptic" in it, and almost inquire of him what it means, but decide not to. I regard his reactions as very peculiar, as he is in the practice of responding to me and even my most empty-headed questions with some amount of interest and honesty, not the bitterness I am seeing now. I decide, very wisely, I believe, to stay quiet until he drives us, free of accidents, to our destination, of which I am still partially ignorant. Watching the city pass by proves to be far more engrossing than arguing with the hero. It is not what I had envisioned it to be, and yet it was somehow incredibly perfect! Because it was December, there were lights suspended in many of the trees, and the sloppy residue of snow in the streets, pristine only on the roofs of buildings. And every once in a while, I saw Negroes! I forgot all about my idea of silence as I informed the hero of them. It did not make him as joyful as it made me.

"Holy GOD, Alex, you're not supposed to say that."

"You are always having such a … vendetta against the Negroes! It manufactures very little sense, as you are a Jew."

"What does me being Jewish have to – okay, wait a moment. Just wait. I'll try to explain it to you." He was attempting to de-percolate himself with deep breathing. "You know the common decencies I told you about?"

"Yes," I uttered, because how could I forget such things?

"There's one we have in America called political correctness."

"Political correctness."

"Yeah. The word you used … Negro … it isn't politically correct. It isn't socially acceptable. Maybe it was a long time ago, but now everyone says African-Americans."

"I think I heard you utter this before."

"I have said it before, I just don't think it got through to you."

"Negroes still sounds better. And it is more flaccid to utter."

In response to this, Jonathan did a very curious thing – he pushed his face into the steering wheel, activating the horn several times.

"What? Jonfen!" I shout, genuinely alarmed. "Are you dead? … You haven't finally been in the accident, have you?"

"No, no … you're the only one who's doing that. _I'm_ perfectly fine."

"Well, it is _not_ permissible to frighten me!"

"It's so fucking impossible with you sometimes." He utters it like it is a question.

"You are sometimes fucking this girl, Impossible?"

The Collector is quiet again. It is not the kind of quiet to which I am accustomed from him, but a quiet that is full of barbs and poison, so I do not trespass upon it again, and am instead content to observe New York City and its numerous lights.

-----

My bad mood slowly lifts as I walk up to the stairs. It's too difficult to stay mad about this sort of thing, especially with someone like him. Blame falls off him like water, which doesn't surprise me, because Alex is a million things, most of which don't have words to call them by. There's one that does. He's charming, and maybe that's the reason. Hmm. Kind of a gay word. I feel a pang of guilt after I think that. Didn't I just lecture Alex on the perils of throwing around politically incorrect terms? I can't do anything about it, though, because charming is what Alex is when I open the door and turn around to look at him.

"I like it," he says, stepping in with hands held behind him, "but do you not consider it a little … not spacious?"

"It's just me here, so I figured I didn't need that much room. Besides, I'm not really made of money."

"It seems to me like you are," Alex says, and it's in that half-interested tone, so the real meaning is indecipherable. "Sometimes" he adds when our eyes meet uncomfortably for a few seconds. I quickly look at the floor.

"What I sent you … it wasn't a frivolous expense to me." I hoped he'd known that when he'd mailed it back. "I don't want to be some spoiled rich American to everyone in the -- everyone in Ukraine. Or everyone in … everywhere, really." He smiles at that. I feel like an idiot.

"This is not so. I do not think of you like that …" He surveys the almost all-purpose room. "So it is truly only you?"

"Yeah … why would there be anyone else?" I laugh, a little nervously.

"Are you not visited frequently by friends?"

"Not really …" I'd rather not linger on this topic. "Hey, do you want some coffee or something? You're supposed to stay up as late as you can to help with the jet lag."

"Could you procure a cappuccino?" he asks, very seriously.

"Didn't I just say I wasn't made of money?"

He smiles in a way that lets me know he was joking. "Black coffee is fine, as long as it does not resemble tar like the coffee in the terrible hotel. I wrote about forcing you to drink it, do you recollect?"

"I don't think even that one sip is going to leave my digestive tract in the next ten years. I won't have to try to remember. I can promise you that the coffee here isn't like that, at least."

"In Ukraine, I visit my friends all the time. Or usually we meet somewhere. I did not enjoy having them at my own home. It always made Father so angry, and I do not know quite why. He would on occasion exalt my popularity, or at least my _semblance_ of popularity in regards to our drunken conversations, and sometimes it would make him wrathful that I had friends at all."

"I'm kind of glad I never met your father."

"I wish I were as lucky."

Silence again, but it wasn't uncomfortable like before.

"So why are you not sociable, Jonfen?"

"I don't know."

"Surely you must know."

"If I knew, don't you think I'd have done something about it by now?"

"Surely you must know at minimal a petite reason." He looked at me with such a strange … I don't even know what word I can use to describe it with. Curiosity? No, that wasn't it … I'm a writer, dammit; I'm supposed to know these things. Intensity? Not quite. I guess I'd call it … faith. He has faith in me? Wow, that really makes me feel sort of … sort of really awful at myself. He really thinks I know the reason why my telephone never rings, or why people make excuses to leave my presence.

"I guess … I guess part of the reason why I don't have too many friends … or any, really …" Alex looked a little downcast at that. "Except for you, of course, but you know what I meant." He tilts his head in that usual idiosyncratic way and smiles a little, making what I planned on saying next that much more difficult. "It's because … when I meet people, it doesn't matter how cool and nice to me they are, I'm just … always so afraid I'll mange to fuck it up, somehow." He stays quiet for a few seconds.

"This is human." I think that's the first time I've ever heard him use that word. I wonder if he learned it from me. "In truth, everyone is concerned about this."

"I know, it's just me more than most people …" I can't look at him anymore. I think I feel tears behind my eyes, and I suspect that he knows I do.

"What makes you think you will … fuck up?" It is so funny to hear him swear, and I smile, despite myself.

"Because I have before."

"Why do you not put the past behind you?"

I laugh again. "I'm not particularly good at that, in case you haven't noticed."

"I suppose that if you were, we would never have met, yes?"

"I guess we wouldn't have."

"So it is a good thing, on occasion."

"A really good …"

"What?" He flashes that familiar twisted smile, exposing that capped tooth that seems to shine regardless of how much light there is, somehow. "You may say it. I _implore_ you to say it.

I smile and roll my eyes. "Okay, okay … it's a really good thing that I met you."

"Because …?"

"What, are you fishing for compliments now?"

"Yes."

Can't argue with honesty, I suppose. "Everyone usually has to strain their necks, but you just … get me, somehow. And let's face it … I'm a real weirdo. I'm really fucking eccentric, that's what my family likes to call it, and you put up with that. You like me anyway. And I know it's silly, but sometimes, I …"

"It is _not _silly, Jonfen."

"I think I need you."

"It is the same state of affairs with me. Very _much_ the same."

I smile a little awkwardly, and shuck off my shoes, pulling up my feet alongside me for the first time in too many years. He leaned back and looked at his hands for a while, then up at me, though he kept facing downwards.

"Listen, I've never told anyone this before, but I think you might be able offer some insight on it. The only time I ever dated anyone was in my senior year of high school."

"You have had a girlfriend?"

"Yes. No. Sort of. It was 2 years ago and I didn't even get to know her, really."

"At least you had one!"

"Cry me a river, All-the-Girls-want-to-be-Carnal-with-Me."

"Continue with the story."

"Yeah … I met her on a school trip to DC."

"The District of Columbia!"

I marvel at just how much American trivia he's amassed over the years.

"Actually, yes."

"I imagine it was exciting! It is the capital, you are aware?"

"Yes, I am … aware." I _live_ here, in case you haven't noticed. I choose not to say that out loud, prone as Alex's mood was to being spoiled by my irritated cynicism. "And no, it wasn't exciting. Kind of like the opposite. It's all concrete there. Come to think of it, it's the most concrete city I've ever been to, apart from Odessa. And there's this rule that no building can be taller than the Capitol, so there's no real skyline to look at. Our class got behind schedule so most of the trip was just getting off the bus, staring at some random monument for two minutes, maybe snapping a picture that you'll never look at, then getting back on the bus and going to the next one."

"We never took journeys with the school. There is not so much to see."

"You could have gone to Moscow and seen the onion-shaped castles, and Lenin's glass coffin."

"Moscow is not so proximal, and I think Lenin's transparent grave would be a rather disconcerting thing to witness."

"Fair enough. The only stuff we really stopped to see was the White House, of course, and the Holocaust Memorial Museum." Alex didn't say anything. I didn't expect him to know anything about it, anyway. "It was interesting. It's weird how much stuff there is to see. The Nazis documented everything, you know. Genocides aren't usually so meticulous, but they recorded so much of what they did. You can't get access to most of the documents, though, unless you're a Nazi Hunter or taking a college course or something."

"I would not want to see them."

"Nobody really does. What disturbed me the most were the photographs of Joseph Mengele's experiment victims. They had walls around the screen, which was on the floor, so that little kids couldn't see it, and it was obvious why…"

"Tell me about your girlfriend."

"I wouldn't say she was my girlfriend, really …"

"Why not?"

"Because I never …" I stopped. "Her name was Stephanie. Her school was there, too, by some weird coincidence."

"A very fateful meeting."

"I don't know about fate or anything, Alex." Is he making fun of me? It's so hard to tell, sometimes. "I was sitting on a bench, just kind of soaking in everything I'd just seen … and she walks up to me, and the first thing she says is, 'I think fanny packs are the coolest things,' and we just started talking."

"I thought you said fanny packs were not cool in America."

"They aren't, by general consensus. Anyway, she was one of those arty types. She mentioned how she hated the juvenile mentality a lot of people our age seemed to be stuck in, and how when she saw me, she knew I was different."

"Were you in possession of your current pair of glasses at the time?"

"Yeah … why?"

"It is nothing. Continue your story."

"It turned out that her school was going to the White House the next day, too, so we'd see each other again … Oh God, now here comes the worst part. I'll hate those kids forever for it."

"For what?"

"A … contest of sorts. It's really sort of sick, actually. We were staying in cheap hotel rooms, four of us in each one. I was with three guys I didn't really know, but were sort of my friends by default at that time. You know how that stuff goes. And that night two of them walked in on the other one … Sofiovka-ing."

"Masturbating!"

"Wow, Alex, could you say that a little louder? I don't think the people on the _tenth floor_ heard you too clearly!"

"Sorry."

"I don't even want to think about how you know that word. Anyway, that guy got hell from the other two for it, and I don't know exactly how it happened, but they got this idea for a contest for the rest of the trip, which was four days. Whoever, you know … didn't do it at all during that time would win. Usually I'd be capable of ignoring that kind of stupidity, but these guys were so loud about it! It was all they talked about.

"I was standing with them the next day when we were just about to start our tour of the White House, and I see sophisticated Stephanie walking towards me in her black beret, and at that precise moment, those guys go on about their ridiculous contest and who lost last night. She gives me this look of monumental disgust and disappointment, flips around, and walks back to her group, disappears into the crowd. Words can't describe how awful … and frustrated that made me."

"Perhaps a woman this judgmental is not so premium for you."

"I don't think it was to do with being judgmental … she thought I'd been lying about who I was when she saw those kids acting like frat boys in training."

"Had you lied?"

"No, of course not. It was just a terrible, terrible accident of cataclysmic proportions, that's all."

"I see. Well, it is her mistake, not yours, so it is not necessary to be regretful."

"I wish emotions were logical like that."

"Of course they are not logical! It would be the death of so many things if they were. But do attempt, Jonfen, to put this in the past. It is not worth the guilt it indentures."

We sit in silence. Alex sips his coffee, and I try not to watch him.

"I must inquire this, so please forgive me. Who won the contest?"

"_I_ won the contest," I say, giving him a very irritated look, and his eyes widened like the time I told him that we had homosexuals holding all sorts of occupations in America, then he laughed a little. "I didn't even have to try, either. God, what kind of revolting horny sleaze-ball can't go for four days without jerking off?"

"Eh … I think I will repose now. Good night, Jonfen!" He goes to dump out the last dregs of coffee in the sink, and practically runs to my room, where he tossed that ugly suitcase.

"It was a rhetorical question!" I shout after him, but I don't get a response. I turn on the TV, re-adjusting the volume to a low murmur, with the intention of absent-mindedly watching the History Channel until Alex falls asleep. Instead, I drift off on the couch, dreaming of Stephanie and some avant-garde, post-modern art exhibit that she's taken me to. Alex is there, too, but he's a parallel-universe Alex who identifies more with Franz Kafka than he does with Michael Jackson, and we're all smoking clove cigarettes and commenting in low voices on a sculpture. He leads us over to a tall canvas slashed with vivid dark colors and explains to us in a severe Russian accent, not a goofy Ukrainian one, all about German Expressionism, and what we could assume De Kooning's work was influenced by in 1950s Germany. I look at Stephanie, who nods her head in response to Alex's newfound expertise on the world of art, and all the colors started to melt together and the walls, made of cheap thin white cardboard, fell outwards and I'm on my couch again. The whole world seems to stand perfectly still, save for the cars' perpetual buzz on the streets below. I assume Alex is asleep by then, but don't go to my room right away and instead contemplate the cracks forming in the ceiling and Stephanie, frozen in memory, and Alex, whom I knew would never change, not too much, and the noise of the city seems to drop away again, and sunflowers spring up in my dream space, their song of illumination filling to the brim the impossibly blue sky over Ukraine.


	3. Dare

In which Stephanie makes a brief re-appearance and offers cryptic advice, because goddammit, that's what Stephanie's there for.

Chapter Three: Dare  
Spawned from the Rather Unpleasant Imagination of One Kuddelfiske

I've always had this weird habit of waking up and not realizing it, and for five minutes I'll drift in and out of dreams with open eyes. Dad told me it was because I was always dreaming. Whenever he said that I always responded with the self-deprecating remark that perhaps I was just more comfortable navigating my own subconscious than reality. I felt so profoundly alone when I walked the waking world, which pulsed outside the blind-drawn windows, teeming with strangers. I slid off the couch as I reached for my glasses, and took the six steps to the kitchen. One good thing about living in a closet of an apartment – it's all pretty centralized. Yeah, centralized. It sounds better than cramped, at least. I really don't want to be a part of New York, New York … too early for show tunes. Always too early. Somebody must have known I needed caffeine and graciously prepared a shot of espresso. It's pretty much the same thing as speed.

"Good morning, Jonfen." Oh right, it was Alex. Alex was here.

"Did you watch 'Charlie's Angels' as a kid or something?" I asked groggily, practically falling into the chair.

"That was a premium show!" He grins, and I realize with subdued shock that he's wearing a white collared shirt which he actually _tucked_ (albeit loosely) into pinstriped pants which flared out just a little too much to be fashionable, at least in the 21st century. And a black skinny tie, which looked suspiciously similar to one of mine.

"Are you … going somewhere today?"

He flashed a nervous smile, and I caught a glimpse of his blingy necklaces, tucked surreptitiously under his collar. "Yes. I am going forth to a school for accounting …" A knot of anxiety formed in my stomach. "I beg you not to be cross! I will tell you that I fully intend of supporting myself. And also Little Igor." He added the name of his little brother quickly but forcefully, and I knew that there was no compromising with him. "To do this, I applied for a job."

"What?" I ask incredulous. And then, "Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because I do not desire Mother nor Little Igor to know the true reason for which I went abroad, in the case that I would fail. I know that you believe this to be a cowardly action, but you must understand, Jonfen, that I would never tell them something and then ruin it. It is such a horrible thing."

"I … I understand that." We sat there quietly for a while, awkwardly staring at the tabletop. "But Alex … if you're serious about going into … accounting … here, you're going to be here for a while. Don't you think they'll … suspect something?"

"I have already cogitated a remedy for this!" His good-natured ditzyness rushed back into his features. ""I will inform them that I misplaced my passport."

"Alex. Do you have any _idea_ what you're getting yourself into? You can't lie about something like that! … It's illegal, for one thing. You're already registered as a visitor, but if you want to stay here, you need a green card."

"I don't need a _green card_," he said impatiently. "I can pretend to be American. It will be cinchy."

I just … oh, dear God. What was he thinking? Between his outdated perception of pop culture and thick accent, he could _never_ pass for somebody who's lived here for even two years.  
"It … it doesn't work that way. Immigration Officers are harder to trick than your own family." Alex contemplated this as we listened to the traffic outside. "You can stay here for six months, and no one in Ukraine or America will be any the wiser."

"What does it mean, any the wiser?"

"It means they won't know."

"Oh, okay."

"But after that, it would just be wrong to continue to lie to them." Seeing his alarm at that, I quickly added, "Even if it doesn't work out, they'll still be proud of you for trying. I know my family would be."

"We come from different worlds, Jonfen S. Foer. But I understand, and I apologize. I merely did what I thought would be the right thing." He focused on me with an almost unnatural forcefulness, and it made me realize exactly how tense he was.

"How much of that stuff did you drink?"

"Four." He responded, shrugging.

" … Why?" He looked at me as though I'd asked the stupidest question in the world.

"Fine, but just to let you know, you might be seeing those four cups of coffee again later."

He didn't seem to understand, and waved my comment away. "It is fine. I do not intend on manufacturing any zzzs at all during the interview today."

"You have an interview."

"Yes."

"For this job, I'm assuming."

"Yes." He nodded apologetically, and I realized that there was absolutely no way to stop someone like him. And why would I want to, anyway? It's not like I could afford to keep a permanent guest in my house. And it's not like Alex would offer to do anything productive, like laundry. I actually almost laughed at the thought. Well, it's not any more intuitive than him being somebody's accountant, one day.

"Where?" I asked, genuinely curious to know what he was interested in, aside from accounting. A lifeguard who heroically gave blonde girls in bikinis CPR? It was December, but I knew that it had crossed his mind at least once. Doing some shady business involving the underground rave scene? Those places were drug havens; he had to know that. But he couldn't be seriously considering …

"The Headquarters of the United Nations. It's here, in New York City. I applied as a Russian-English translator three days yore."

Oh. Perfect. "Alex …" Wait, Jonathan. You remember that time in Fourth Grade when you said you wanted to play basketball when you grew up and all the kids laughed and told you that you were too short? It set you off sports for life. And that time in high school when you said you wanted to study botany and everyone called you "Fairy Boy" for a week? You don't even have geraniums in the window box because of that. I need to be supportive, not just of Alex, but of his bad decisions as well. " … Do you need directions?"

------

He watched the blinding yellow lights whiz by between brief intermissions of blue-ish darkness, and felt as if the butterflies in his stomach had taken some crack. Maybe Jonathan was right about the coffee. He closed his eyes, and pretended this was deep space, and he was in a shuttle sent to some uncharted planet. He and Little Igor used to pretend about that kind of thing all the time. Pilot Igor and Cosmonaut Alli. He smiled at the memory. His brother was always the pilot, because he had a certain fascination with the solar system that Alex couldn't quite summon. Little Igor's bed was always the space ship, but if he were here right now, he'd agree that the subway was much more similar to one. If it were a space ship though, it might be quieter, and there wouldn't be a hobo muttering to himself or a yuppie yakking into his cell phone. But, he thought, optimistic as he was, if he were on a ship, there wouldn't be a woman in a short dress sitting next to him.

"Did you know that the Soviets sent the first rocket into space?"

She bit her lip and looked up at him. "Is that so."

"Yes! There was a bitch on that rocket."

"Excuse me?"

"A bitch. Her name was Laika."

She scrunched up her nose in disgust and stood up to leave this particular compartment. Alex shrugged, turning to watch the lights fly by as he waited for the slightly unsettling mechanical voice to announce his stop.

------

It bothered him slightly when he read in one of Alex's letters that he was not born to be a writer. The suggestion sunk under his skin and began to itch, which he hated and couldn't quite dispel because he'd never fully convinced himself that he had been. Up until his senior year in high school, Jonathan had been only passively interested in writing. He'd always loved to read, but whenever he'd put pen to paper his thoughts would scatter away and he was left empty of anything that could possibly inspire him. His last English teacher told him that he was too detached form his writing – he looked so far outside his immediate world that his own identity hardly shaped his stories, which consequently didn't resonate at all and gave off the creepy vibe that they'd been composed by a robot. His teacher told him to write about whatever meant the most to him, and the first image the phrase conjured was his grandfather's amber pendant, which still occupied the first plastic bag he'd ever touched. The idea confused him at first, and he didn't know quite how to interpret it, but the more the image of amber burned brightly in his mind, the more he understood its meaning. And so his family history began to initiate some lengthy semi-fictionalized narratives. But there was always that black hole approaching which everything went hazy around the edges and generations were drowned, and Jonathan needed more to fill he gaps it created. Knowing instinctively that Sabine would not tell him anything, he decided to find out himself, in the place from which his grandfather had fled – a tiny shtetl of 1,030 near the Polish-Ukrainian border. The scribbled note on the back of the only photograph had of Safran's youth referred to the town as Trachimbrod. _This is me with Augustine. Trachimbrod, 1942. _He was worried that perhaps he'd wanted to know more than he wanted to write, and that he really didn't have a dream like Alex's, because both his stories and truth could flit away at any moment.

Journalism was a form of writing which didn't particularly call to him, but it kept him under a roof, at least, while he wrote his high-preferred narratives. He did "odd jobs" of sorts for a local newspaper, as long as the subjects the editor assigned him weren't highly specialized (he'd made it very clear that he would never pen a sports piece during this lifetime, at least). Restaurant reviews he was fine with, especially considering that the paper covered all his expenses, and it got him to try new things, which he'd never jump at the opportunity of otherwise. Whenever a vegetarian restaurant opened, the persnickety Robert Willis, who usually wrote the reviews, would ask Jonathan to go instead, because he "Can actually stomach that Tofu shit." Jonathan happily obliged that day, and wove his way through the traffic to the restaurant Robert had balked at, a small Vegan placed called, quaintly, "The Pristine Palate," in the upper-crust part of town. Jonathan was more familiar with the salad bars of Bohemia, and thought woefully of his crappy Toyota sitting amongst all the sparkling Porches and Mercedes-Benzes in the parking garage around the corner. _Just wait,_ he thought to himself, practicing with the chopsticks as he scanned the menu. _Just wait until I write that best-seller._

------

Alex's heart thudded in his ears as he practically floated over the crowded sidewalk with confident strides. The United Nations Building was coming into view. He thought that for a moment he saw a halo around it, but it was only the sun shining from behind. Ascending the concrete steps … heaving open one of the double doors ... practically drifting through security … arriving at an imposing desk. "My legal name is Alexander Perchov."

------

The appetizer of caramelized papaya had been okay, Jonathan thought. He recorded the name of the dish into his small black notebook and scribbled next to it, "exquisite." Yeah. That sounded good.

Taking absent-minded sips of unsweetened carrot juice, Jonathan surveyed the narrow room with its acid green and melon red walls, dim-lighting, and eclectic clientele. He was sitting at a table for two near the bar, but it was different from any other one he'd ever been dragged to, in that everyone was drinking tall glasses of iced tea and shots of grass juice in lieu of alcohol. Somebody sat down in front of him. "Hey," said a deep and rich and raspy voice. Broken stained glass. "Long time, no see."

Jonathan looked up, shocked, into green eyes heavily outlined with Kohl. "Stephanie?"

"You know, I always thought I'd run into you at one of these places. I think I remember you telling me that you were a vegetarian."

"I … I might have." The full effect of Stephanie's presence hadn't quite sunken in. "What have you been doing?" He added quickly, in an effort to make some semi-ordinary conversation.

"I graduated from film school, and just started making a documentary about the abuse of mimes. You?"

"Um … I've just been, well …" His grating phone ring emanated from his (well, Alex's, actually, since they'd switched that morning in a fit of Alex's panic when he'd worried about professional presentation) suitcase. "Excuse me for a moment." Stephanie eyed the suitcase with great interest as Jonathan pulled out his black brick of a cell phone out from it.

"Hello?"

"Greetings. I just exited the interview … where are you?"

"Um, I'm at a restaurant …" Jonathan looked up nervously at Stephanie, who looked remarkably like the girl from Pulp Fiction with her elbow resting on the table like that and her cat-like eyes watching him intently. "How did it go?"

"I must inform you in your presence. Which restaurant?"

"Uh, 'Pristine Palate.' It's on Manhattan Avenue. But you might not want to – " Only the beeping tone heard his warning. He'd hung up.

… Wonderful.

"Who was that?" Stephanie asked with innocence Jonathan suspected to be false.

"Someone who's staying with me. He just got interviewed for a job at the … at the United Nations, actually."

"Politician?"

Jonathan laughed. "No, far from it. He's pretty honest."

"Honest? What else?"

"Why do you want to know?" Jonathan asked, eyebrows knitted in worry.

"Isn't a person allowed to be curious?" She puckered her purple lips around her unpolished copper mug, throwing Jonathan a look that ranged somewhere between amused and accusatory.

"Sorry." Jonathan crossed his arms, unsure to whether he wanted desperately for Alex to walk in the door right then or desperately for him to pass up this restaurant for one that offered things of a more sausage-y nature. "This is his suitcase, actually. Well, his grandfather's, really. He just brought it over with him."

"Over? From where?"

"Ukraine." He looked down at the menu for something to order next. He'd asked the owner which dishes were best representative of the restaurant as a whole and he'd said either the stuffed avocado or the curried tofu. But he couldn't really pay any attention to it.

"It seems as thought his young man is always drawing a crowd of intriguing individuals." Jonathan froze, not quite knowing what she was referring to. She sipped her tea elegantly (Jonathan noticed that she extended her smallest finger to make for a more delicate grip), still fixing him with that intent stare.

"I … I wouldn't say a crowd, exactly."

"Oh?"

"No. I'm usually on my own with things." He hadn't meant to express his isolation quite so blatantly, but whenever he spoke to Stephanie it was as though pages of the journal he didn't keep kept falling out of his mouth.

"Aren't we all?" asked the Cleopatra across the table, but it was more of a statement than the fed-up rhetorical question he'd expected. "It's conducive to personal growth and all that, but you can't be alone all the time. If one keeps a plant in a dark room, it doesn't matter how much water one gives it; it wilts without sunlight. Humans are dependant on more than one thing."

He paused for a moment before responding. "I don't like … being dependent. Even though I am, and on so many things."

"Are you saying you're a materialist?"

"Not exactly. More just … dependant on the comfort things can provide."

"Physical or emotional?"

"Both."

Hmm." It wasn't the "hmm" of a psychoanalyst, or even the "hmm" of a parent. Jonathan imagined it perhaps to be the sound of introspection. Or maybe just contentment with the tea she was drinking.

"You know, I stopped collecting things after I came back," he added like an afterthought. "But I still feel the same."

"Perhaps you just need to part the metaphorical sea," said Stephanie, giving him a warmly wicked smile. "Escape from whatever's been holding you back."

"Holding me back …" His mind ran through the possibilities, looking back up at Stephanie with wide eyes. "From what?"

"If I need to tell you, then the situation's hopeless. But if you're the same person I met all those years ago, you've got a sense of purpose. A forceful will. So you'll try, right?"

"I can't … unleash plagues or anything like that."

"No. And the forty years of wandering the desert's no cakewalk, either. But it's better than being slave to it."

He was waiting for her to offer him a red pill and a blue pill when she suddenly lost her omnipotent intonation and simply said, "So, tell me about him."

Her sudden curiosity shot Jonathan down from his own personal sky of possibilities he'd just been soaring speculatively over. "Who?"

"Who else? The guy from the Ukraine. Or is it just Ukraine?"'

Jonathan wisely ignored her second question.

"He's very … unique. The world should be glad there's only one person like him running around."

She smiled a little, but didn't push the subject. "So, what were you doing there?"

"Searching. Searching for someone."

"Any success?"

"No. And yes. It's a long story. She's gone now." Jonathan hoped the short spurts of sentences intertwined coherently.

"Hey … is that him, perchance? You know, your room-mate?" She pointed to the front of the room, where Alex was surveying the restaurant as though it were a foreign planet. And to him, it probably seemed like one. This was a different side of America, one Jonathan was quite confident wouldn't appeal to his visitor nearly as much as "Saturday Night Fever." He spotted them, and walked over cautiously.

"Alex, this is … Stephanie." She extended one of her manicured hands for him to shake.

"It is a pleasure to meet you," answered Alex, and although Jonathan was grateful that he hadn't given her the greeting he himself had received upon first meeting his translator ("It would not be nice to beat you"), it frustrated him that Alex had quite obviously no idea who she was.

"I met _Stephanie_ on a _school trip_," he intoned, and it appeared as though Alex had gotten the message.

"Ah, is this so." The waiter set the curried tofu in front of Jonathan, and he and Alex took a very sudden interest in it. Jonathan picked up his chopsticks, looking up at Stephanie with concern. She excused herself and left, but not after kissing Jonathan on the cheek. He watched her leave, frazzled.

"So _that _was her?"

Jonathan nodded, chasing the tofu around his plate.

"Did she remember?"

"I don't now … probably," he replied miserably. "Anyway. What happened with you?"

"I answered truthfully to all their questions. I showed them my résumé, and the letters you and my English professor at University wrote to recommend me."

"And …?"

"They said they would inform in five days. Five days! What will I do until then?"

Jonathan didn't respond.

"I am eating humble pie for what occurred. I should have been aware that my English was not first-rate enough for this."

"Don't say that … you'll find something._ We'll _find something."

Alex smiled a little, still obviously distraught, but comforted by the promise.

"Where can a person acquire vodka in this vicinity?"

"You drink that with lunch?" Jonathan asked, incredulous and slightly amused.

"We are always drinking vodka in the totally awesome former Soviet Republics. Especially in times of distress and doubt."

"Okay … well, I don't think they'll have any _here_."

"Why not?"

"This place is vegetarian. Like me; how I don't eat meat. Most vegetarians don't drink either. It's a lifestyle."

"What does it mean, lifestyle?"

"A way of living."

"There is no way of living without neither meat nor vodka."

"I'm doing okay with it," Jonathan said, a little defensively.

"This is arguable."

"I just don't like meat! Or … vodka."

"You do not drink the beer?"

"No."

"Whiskey?"

"No."

"Wine?"

"No."

"And what about the rum?"

"No! Especially not that."

"What is wrong with you?"

"There's nothing wrong with me. I just don't see the appeal."

"The appeal? The appeal of what?"

"Of the stuff itself or its effect … or after-effect," he added with a grimace.

"Perhaps you merely cannot retain your alcohol," suggested Alex.

"I can hold it just fine."

"I will bet that you are becoming drunk with merely one glass."

"That's not the issue. I just don't like the way it tastes."

Alex laughed, stating that he understood.

"You can have some grass juice, though," suggested Jonathan.

"They are capable of manufacturing juice from _that_?" he asked, horrified. "No thank you!"

"It's really good for you."

"I do not care! It is a disgusting notion, to manufacture a drink from the lawn."

"It has the nutrients of two pounds of vegetables."

"Be reasonable, Jonathan," Alex said with the air of an irritated schoolteacher.

"Hey," Jonathan said, holding up a shot glass of the strange extraction from his line of samples. "If you drink this, I'll go out for vodka with you." Alex gave him a "Yeah, right" look, but took the small glass anyway, eyeing it with a mouth drawn back in revulsion. He gulped it down it one swift motion, setting the slimy glass back down triumphantly.

"I guess Russians really _will_ drink anything."

"This is incredibly true. And now you must go with me."

"I didn't think you'd actually do it."

"A deal is a deal, Jonfen S. Foer. Finish your not-meat and we will go."

As Jonathan signed the bill and slipped the carbon copy into his pocket for future reimbursement by the paper, he wondered exactly what he'd gotten himself into.

------

He should have known Alex would choose a place like this, a flashing, cheap pit halfway underground in the grungier part of the city. As soon as he walked in, it filled him with uneasiness and faint fear. It was like another universe, with sparkling neon stars and sparkling neon people who turned to stare, because he was the alien here. Thick smoke seemed to insinuate itself deep inside him, and he was reminded of all those horrifying x-rays of the tar-filled lungs of smokers, so shriveled they hardly even resembled organs. Typical public service announcement propaganda, perhaps, but it was still real, and enough to usually keep him as far away as possible from these types of places. The initially rough stench gradually became cloyingly sweet, and Jonathan reminded himself that one night spent breathing this air wouldn't kill him.

But the vodka might. It smelled like the stuff used to clean toilets, and he didn't hesitate to tell Alex.

"That grass shit was much more similar to such a thing."

"At least it doesn't kill any brain cells."

"This is a saying which I learned two days yore: do not be knocking until you have attempted."

Jonathan's last excuse had been quite easily deflated. "Okay then." He raised the glass to the blue light. "To … to Sammy David Junior Junior. May she never hump my leg again."

"This is demanding a little much, but I commend your toast. To Sammy!"

It was awful, just like he'd expected, leaving a trail of corrosion in his mouth and throat. He needed water to ease that strange acidic burn. Alex said something to the bartender, and another glass was pressed to his lips. He gulped it down, not even bothering to reach up and hold it himself, until the horrible taste left. When it did, he felt sick to both his stomach and his standards.

"That was not even a substantial amount. You must truthfully never drink."

"Why would I have lied about something like that?"

"I was not intending that you lied, Jonathan," said Alex, stressing every syllable in that way he did whenever he was trying to explain a concept to him that wasn't sticking. "Well, perhaps I was, but it does not matter." The room started to delicately sway, and the slight nausea it caused must have shown, because he was quickly asked if he wanted to leave.

"No, you go do… whatever it is you do at places like this … I'll just stay here. It'll be fine." When he spoke in that straight-forward tone, he almost believed himself.

"You are sure."

"Yes."

"You are positive?"

"Yes! Just go."

Alex recoiled slightly, looking around in several directions, shrugged, and disappeared into the pulsing lights.

Maybe he was right about Jonathan not being able to hold his alcohol. The half-filled glass taunted him with its institutionalized, chemical scent, reminding him of the days he'd spent home, sick. He downed all of it, and before he could even ask for more water to wash away the burning aftertaste, he'd blacked out.

------

Something wet stroked languidly right under his collarbone. Drowsy questions got lost in his mental fog and he stretched back. The feeling resonated strangely in the dark.

"_He's never been a problem"_

"_Always so quiet"_

"_Sometimes I don't know"  
"Don't think he believes"_

"_I don't believe in man either"_

It trailed downwards. He didn't know who and he didn't know why and he didn't care at all and even if he did …

"_Afraid of things"_

_"Sometimes I'm afraid I'll forget"  
"It is not so unusual, not knowing"_

He reached out, just to see if anything was really there, if it wasn't just a trick of the dark or a nightmarish deception, drunken delusion. Because it was so profoundly sad and wrong and necessary, and he pushed him gently down, further, further, feeling a deep shame, the kind that took years and years to scrape away, but also a curious absence of it. Weird and electrifying. He wondered how Alex could do that, Sasha, Shapka, Perchov, he wondered how anyone could, and once it started he never wanted this to stop Alex's hands on his legs or his own in Alex's hair, but it inexplicably did. Alex was breathing into his neck and their eyes met, almost apologetically.


End file.
